On the political right, to be termed a progressive is to be called a
dirty word. For a right-winger to support anything progressive is to
be called a radical, a hippie, a socialist, a communist, or worse... a
Democrat and a liberal, by their fellows. Few on the right seem to
remember that Republicans often have been the forerunners of
progressive thought in American political history and once proudly
claimed the label. It was the so-called Radical Republicans of the
middle 19th century that helped bring an end to slavery in America.
At the turn of the last century, a progressive movement
spearheaded by the conservative Republican Teddy Roosevelt
altered the direction of America in the 20th century. That earlier
progressive movement at the beginning of the 20th century
empowered every American to be all that they could be. At the
beginning of the 21st century, our country needs a unifying and
empowering political agenda that bridges the current political
chasms to restore American greatness.

Progressive also literally means making progress. The
implicit positive meaning is that the progress will generally require
a certain perseverance and focus to gradually achieve a goal over
time. That is the literal meaning of progressive, to make progress.
Progressively is a concept that Americans will have to keep in
mind, because things are going to get progressively better or they
are going to get progressively worse. The status quo cannot stand.
Change is in the air.

Americans have dug a big hole financially, and it is going to
take a long time to dig out. The depth of our debt is staggering.
Paying it down will be a progressive process. We will have to
make serious changes throughout our society to begin the long,
slow climb out of the mess where America finds itself.
Progressively restoring American greatness will require a clear
long-term plan executed over decades. All honest Republican and
Democrats will admit that the aforementioned statements are true,
but that is about all they can agree on! This progressive agenda is a
long-term plan for gradually restoring American leadership in the
world. This book seeks to restore progressively the greatness of
our country through consensus.

Unfortunately, to be progressive today is to be deemed a
liberal, persona non grata, by half this nation. For the other half, to
be progressive is to be a rabble-rouser that gets in the way of
Democratic political gain. Most Democrats are frustrated with
progressives, and the feeling is mutual. Perhaps a Progressive is
not really a Democrat. As a nation, the politics of left and right
have prevented 'progress' for far too long, and forward progress is
clearly a necessity for the 21st century

The Liberal/Conservative chasm that divides us, mirroring the
Democrat/Republican fault line, has fractured our nation.
Progressive politics laid the groundwork for American ascendancy
in the 20th century, and it can do so again. Progressive has certain
political connotations today that tend to make many Americans
think of unrestrained liberal government...at least in the eyes of
most Republicans and right-wing conservatives. It is a sad truth
that today's GOP has forgotten that a conservative Republican
president, Teddy Roosevelt, shepherded the progressive vision into
American politics. Perhaps it irks them that his liberal Democratic
cousin, President Franklin Roosevelt then nurtured it.

The current war between the parties has hamstrung us, and so
it seemed appropriate to embrace the political title of progressive.
It is a title that has history and connections on both sides of the
aisle. Progressives should be promoting a forward-thinking
political and social agenda for the new challenges we face as a
nation and not getting bogged down in partisanship.

This book is meant to appeal to all red-blooded, patriotic
Americans, whether they identify themselves as Democrat,
Republican, 3rd party, independent, or apolitical. Progressives are
not a bunch of lefty ideologues, and progressives are not the left
wing of the Democratic Party. A true progressive is a serious
person seeking serious solutions to help America and her people
progress into the future regardless of party agendas.

This book seeks to knit together a progressive agenda that
appeals to concerned Americans and builds a majority that can
lead. Make no mistake because this agenda seeks to unite
Americans, it requires Americans of every stripe to compromise.
Americans must find a common ground, and this book seeks to
reveal the common ground that is being concealed by the 'fog of
partisan war'. Whether you call yourself a conservative, a liberal, a
Democrat, a Republican, or are unaffiliated, you will find
something in this book that you will have a hard time liking.

Honestly, I set out to write a book that could unite average
Americans and that meant compromises for me as well. I
compromised, because united we stand, divided we fall is as true
as it ever was. These ideas can allow us to progress together into
our future.

Jury nullification is the lost check of the people against
government overreaching. America’s Constitution was meant to
create a system of checks and balances that would prevent tyranny.
The Founding Fathers meant to make sure that our government had
to go to twelve citizens every time they intended to rob another
citizen of property or freedom. This has long been a controversial
topic in America. The Establishment has dealt with those who
speak of jury nullification by throwing them in jail for contempt of
court. It is difficult to swim upstream on this, unless the people and
the media speak out in favor it. Again, this is another scary idea of
our founders, because it puts the power to interpret the law into the
hands of the 12 men and women on the jury. The 12 people on the
jury are supposed to be able to vote their conscience and decide for
themselves whether the law applies or the law is just.

One of the keystones of a new progressive agenda must be
citizen empowerment. America’s future rests upon whether or not
individual citizens will step up and shoulder the burdens of
citizenship. As we give more and more power to the government,
we must realize that we are really giving power to the wealthy and
big business lobbies. Power to the People will require an incredible
amount of tolerance from each one of us, because freedom is a
messy business. We will need to tolerate many differing opinions,
lifestyles, and religious beliefs to forge a coalition large enough to
overwhelm the moneyed power that has a chokehold on our
government.

Jury nullification opponents will scream anarchy and point to
trials in the South that let Ku Klux Klan members go free for
lynching that everyone knew they had committed. However, the
Constitution clearly gives the central government the power to
protect individual rights when states and local lawmakers attempt
to abridge citizen rights. Cries from the law-and-order crowd of
anarchy and chaos always target the citizenry’s most fearful
visions, which saturate the media in the numerous flavors of cop
shows and endless news cycles of gruesome crimes drawn from all
across the country. We must trust our fellow citizens. Anarchy
would not result, because an overwhelming majority of Americans
want the bad guys to go to jail and will put them there.

The whole idea behind the American jury system was that we
might allow 99 guilty men to go free before imprisoning one
innocent man. If we do not embrace that most basic concept of our
nation’s founding, we cannot return to greatness. The Founding
Fathers and the Constitution created a justice system that might let
99 guilty individuals go free before imprisoning one innocent,
because that system was a huge check on government power.
Police can arrest people all day, but if they cannot convict them
through constitutional means, their power is checked. The power
of the central government to impose its will upon the people was
limited as well by this system. Jury nullification is the ultimate
check on government power.

The power of jury nullifications means that government
cannot pass laws that less than 95% of the people agree with.
How do we come to this calculation? Simple, given the
requirement of a jury of 12 peers agreeing unanimously to
provide a guilty verdict, we divide 1 by 12, which allows for an
8% disagreement percentage. This leads to a 92% agreement
threshold in the populace for successful implementation of a
given law. However, the ability for a citizen to get at least one
appeal on any conviction raises the bar. This guaranteed appeal
cuts the 8% threshold to a 4% disagreement threshold among
regular citizens being sufficient to influence the central
government’s ability to prosecute a given law. That means that
96% of the populace must agree with a law to send an individual
to jail. What a check on government power to imprison its own
populace! With the requirement of 96% agreement, how could
America have become the largest imprisoner of its own citizens?
America has an enormous prison population and imprisons more
of its citizenry than any other “civilized” nation by raw numbers
and by per capita. This is freedom? No! It is not freedom. We
should all live in great fear of the growing police power of our
central government.

Only jury nullification can stop this horrible abuse of the
central government’s power to make law. Years ago, when George
Bush, Sr. went into Panama and dragged Manuel Noriega back to
the U.S. for a trial, many questioned the legitimacy of such a
military action (but that is for another essay). Our own
international legal experts deemed the military intervention legal,
of course. Nonetheless, at the trial, the American people spoke out
in the courtroom. The people questioned the legitimacy of Bush
the First’s kidnapping of a foreign leader. In the end, the reality
was that the government could not get a conviction. To George
Bush, Sr.’s great dismay, there was a hung jury.

The jurors could not agree that Noriega deserved to be
imprisoned for the alleged drug trafficking that he was charged
with. Many citizens questioned our interpretation of international
law that allowed us to invade Panama as well as using the military
to pursue and capture a foreign head of state. America’s own
system of justice could not and would not convict Noriega.
Apparently, not only was it a violation of international law as
foreign international legal experts had claimed, but it was also a
violation of American law, according to America’s own citizen
jury.

Well, of course, the administration could not stand for an
outcome like that. Bush, Sr. had mobilized the military to invade a
sovereign nation, captured the duly elected leader of that country,
and brought him back to the United States. There had been much
international protest over this Christmas invasion. Many protestors
referenced Noriega’s previous high standing with our government
as an ally in the Drug War. Noriega seemed to be receiving
punishment for some transgression in his dealings with the CIA,
and this was the contention of many within, and without, the U.S.
borders. What an embarrassment it would have been for Bush if
Noriega had not been imprisoned!

Therefore, the jury was marched before a group of
government operatives and presented with “secret evidence”. What
was the secret evidence that never saw the light of day? We still do
not know. We may never know. Perhaps the government officials
simply told the jury that they either convict Noriega or go to jail
themselves. This is an obviously strong motivation to ignore one’s
conscience and save one’s skin. And so, Noriega went to jail, but it
was far from a legal trial. After all, it was obviously a case of jury
tampering, which is a federal offense, but by then, the government
had already largely exempted itself from such mundane constraints
as the Constitution and the rule of law.

If one needs more convincing that the loss of “Jury
Nullification” has broken the American justice system, one only
need look at the Rodney King beating and the subsequent trial of
the officers involved. Many were dismayed by the acquittal of
those officers. The evidence was right there on videotape of what
was done to Rodney King. No one is saying that Rodney King is a
pillar of virtue, but even if he were on PCP, which is arguable, the
tape showed him on the ground and cuffed with multiple officers
continuing to deliver blows to an obviously helpless individual.
How can that not be police brutality?

The jury is not to blame here. The Founding Fathers saw the
judge as an impartial arbiter of facts and fairness in the courtroom,
not an ally of the prosecution. Unfortunately, in 21st century
America the judge does act as an ally to the prosecution. The
jury received strict instructions from the judge that they could not
convict the officers if the Los Angeles Police Department had
trained them to beat Rodney King in this manner. Huh? Surely,
jurors were confused by these instructions, and maybe they even
wished to vote their conscience, despite those instructions.
Unfortunately, they were faced with a jail term if they were to vote
any other way, because of the judge’s unconstitutional powers to
imprison them for voting their conscience. Contempt of court has
been used as a club to beat juries into submission for decades now.

Following the police officers’ acquittal, there were riots that
on the surface had a racial component. Nonetheless, much of what
happened on the day of the acquittal was an assertion of power by
the people. It was more than the black versus white rioting that the
media and government portrayed it as. Many people hit the streets
to protest the acquittal. Some of the rioting may have been a
subconscious desire to send a message to the Establishment that
though they owned the courtroom and made the laws, the streets
were still owned by the people in those South L.A. neighborhoods.

Following this disastrous ruling, the Clinton administration
came in and retried the case, further demonstrating the broken state
of the American justice system by violating constitutional
protections against double jeopardy. The central government got
around this with the torturous logic of claiming that the officers
had violated Rodney King’s civil rights. Despite the ultimate
outcome, the retrial only made the whole situation worse by failing
to address the strict jury instructions that judges have been allowed
to force upon helpless jurors.

The true intent of the jury system is for there to be a constant
vote of the people on the laws being put out from the government.
To accomplish this, we must fund jury service. There is no way a
hard-working stiff can get a jury of his peers. All his peers are
hard-working stiffs too. All the accused’s true peers are working
for companies that do not pay for any jury service. This must
change. The federal government must fund this essential part of the
American justice system. Verified by pay stubs and/or tax returns,
jury compensation should be a more reasonable recompense for
this essential citizen service than what is currently being done. The
society must fund the salary of people called to jury service for our
justice system to work correctly.

Is this too expensive? How much are we willing to pay for
freedom? Rolling back the police state would likely reduce costs
considerably. Repeatedly, progressives must push the theme of
Power to the People. Yes, the people are the great unwashed of our
nation in the eyes of many. Together the people, the poor, the blue
collar, the middle-class, all outnumber the moneyed, the powerful,
the wealthy titans of business, and that is why those same titans are
constantly beating the drums of fear among the middle class. The
moneyed and powerful will go to their default propaganda that
criminals will take over, rape our daughters, and kill our sons. This
is the constant drumbeat of television shows like “CSI this” and
“CSI that” or “Law and Order this” and “Law and Order that”. It
will only be a brave and tolerant citizenry that will be able to resist
this drumbeat.

Within these pages, I am trying to sketch out, in admittedly broad
strokes, a picture of a positive American future. This is a vision
that, if forced upon the politicians, will allow America to make
progress on her finances and her honor, both of which have been
damaged severely at the beginning of this new century. The
following progressive ideas are deeply interconnected and can, if
executed in concert, truly bring about the American Renaissance
that we all crave. This agenda is based upon common sense, not
any true genius or inspiration. Included in the common sense I'll
admit to a healthy dose of tolerance. Politics and the media in
America have polarized society so much that common sense no
longer seems to exist. The partisan ideologies pushing common
sense to the fringe are driven by moneyed power's desire to protect
its elite status and lifestyle.

Freedom and liberty cannot exist in a climate of excessive
government and corporate power. We are on the road toward an
authoritarian capitalism that minimizes individual liberty.
Progressives must seek to promote the freedom that was the
original vision of our Founding Fathers. There are a number of
obstacles to accomplishing this return to greatness. Without
digging our way out of debt, we cannot make the investments in
our infrastructure and our people that are essential for restoring our
greatness as a nation. Moneyed power has achieved levels of
wealth sufficient to build and maintain a private infrastructure,
which stifles public infrastructure improvement. Also, the future
cannot be bright when we are beholden to so many for our energy
needs.

A clear and objective view of the American economy will be
required for success. The economic power of the military-
industrial complex (and now the terror-industrial complex as well)
is based upon conflict. With so much American economic activity
related to the defense industry, it destroys our credibility as a
peace-loving people, and it sows the seeds of endless conflict and
war across the planet...not to mention bankrupting our nation. This
agenda attempts to create a synergy of solutions to bring about
progress on all the aforementioned fronts.
Politicians have stoked the fires of discord along the left/right
axis. The angry, name-calling politics that dominate the airwaves
are very destructive to the country. The partisan wars prevent even
the discussion of controversial ideas, let alone any real action. The
two parties have divided the great issues of the day, without
necessarily any rational reasons, other than the other people are on
one side. This knee jerk reaction for conservatives to oppose
whatever liberals support, and vice versa, leads to little reasoned
debate.

Once there were 'liberal' Republicans, but those handful
that still exist are now known as RINOs, 'Republicans in Name
Only' by their own party. The two parties have become
exclusionary, costing us the special synergy between liberal
Republicans and conservative Democrats that once brought about
dynamic thinking in our politics. This push and pull tension in
four directions instead of two has been lost. The progressive
agenda in the following pages could be seen as a libertarian-
socialist vision of American politics that seeks to reignite our
natural synergies by creating the multi-polar political tension that
once made American politics great. To some a libertarian-
socialist is a contradiction, a fiction, but I submit that there is an
overlapping agenda between all ideologies, if we act as
Americans first rather than as ideologues.

The caricature of Uncle Sam on the cover shows how the
left/right war cripples us. Uncle Sam has eye patches on both eyes.
The one on his right eye is Liberalism, which means this ideology
blinds Sam to ideas from the right. The eye patch on his left eye is
Conservatism, meaning this ideology refuses to see ideas from the
left. Democrats and Republicans are beholden to the polarization
of left vs. right and conservative vs. liberal. Each side has so
demonized the other that any issue one side picks up, the other
must be immediately against. Unfortunately, this leaves poor, old
Uncle Sam blind. Americans must throw off the blinders of these
isms and look objectively for solutions to our society's ills.

We have no shortage of ills! Oh, yes, we have many, many
problems today, which presumably the readers are aware of and
care about or else they would not have opened this book. Partisan
warfare has become so heated that tension between left and right
prevent us from finding the solutions that are actually there under
our noses.

A bipolar political system under stress can settle into a back
and forth swing that never actually makes progress but falls into an
illusion of change through ever more drastic swings of the political
opinion pendulum. Dramatic swings of political opinion can be
revelatory in a multi-polar political universe. However, in the
bipolar universe we are just going back and forth from the left to
the right and back again, which goes nowhere. Society can have a
very short memory. First liberal ideas are all the rage and then
conservative, but in the beginning of our republic, there was a clear
belief in liberty as the guiding ideology.

That belief in freedom brought us together as one nation and
one people and dampened the swing of the pendulum, because
freedom cannot help but create a multi-polar, diverse political
climate. The Founding Fathers provided us a framework from
which to progress, adapt, and evolve over the years, not burdened
by divisive, preconceived notions of ideology. Then, the guiding
vision was that the individual's freedom and liberty comes before
the needs of the State. The focus truly was on the individual and
their freedom and not what was best for the State, for business, or
the oft cited by anti-constitutionalists, public safety.

No doubt, things have changed a lot since the 18th century,
but they have not changed as much as the politicians and
ideologues would have us believe. The Constitution and the Bill of
Rights are still our best weapons. Like the wielding of any weapon
though, it requires courage. It requires the courage to embrace and
demand the rights that individuals are guaranteed by our
Constitution. Unfortunately, individuals have been tempted to turn
over too much of their freedoms to authorities under the influence
of the siren song of safety. The Bill of Rights empowers the
individual citizen to effect change, but citizens must act and be
engaged. Freedom and individual rights are the real defense against
those that would loot our nation's treasury and run our country into
a ditch.

An interesting thing about history is how often the same
pressing problems seem to recur as a particular nation or society
matures, grows, and eventually, passes into oblivion. Each
ideology or ism of its day attacks these recurring problems:
substance abuse, feeding the poor, ensuring civil rights, educating
our children, etc-with a very narrow mindset. History has also
shown that as the pendulum swings back and forth over time, the
swings become ever more violent in each direction. Eventually, the
society tears itself apart. The great American social experiment can
evolve beyond this rollercoaster ride to civil strife.

Remember, moneyed power and their agents are terrified of the
power of the people. The colossal partisan divide and the rabid
rhetoric from the right and left are bought and paid for by moneyed
power. They will fill the airwaves with more and more docu-dramas
of fear to divide us. Through all the wrath and hateful speech, the
money moves the wheels of the state behind the scenes. The laws
created strip the individual of his rights and ability to prevent
moneyed power from getting the legislation they have paid for.

That is what politics in America is really all about today:
money and power. When the power of the individual is constrained,
the power of money and the state become unrestrained. Unholy
alliances between billion dollar corporations and millionaire
government officials become ever more self-serving. Political
rhetoric is used to fire the partisan furnaces any time the regular guy
might actually get some real legislative support.

The healthcare legislation, known as ObamaCare, is a perfect
example of partisanship being used as obstruction. Rallies and
slogans to defeat the legislation were truly divorced from the
realities of the bill, because in partisanship only passion matters,
not reason. Privately funded 'grassroots' rallies, where misguided
Americans shout slogans against socialism and declaring any
government healthcare insurance will be incompetent, while at the
same time protesting potential cuts to their Medicare and Social
Security Benefits, make no sense. To citizens of developed nations
on the outside, looking in, the passionate slogans shouted by
American citizens about the 'Coming Socialist Horror', defy
common sense. It is clear to the citizens of most developed nations
that there should be a social safety net that governments provide
for their citizens.

When common sense is on the fringe, we are in real trouble.
The next chapter is meant to establish just how far common sense
has been pushed from the middle ground. On September 11, 2001,
supposedly, the world changed forever. Perhaps, it did change, but
I am unable to understand the complete transformation of our
national zeitgeist. American reaction to that event boggled me. We
seemed consumed by hate, paranoia, and hell bent for revenge. We
let our emotions divorce reason from our national thought
processes.

My reactions were on the fringe. How I reacted and how I felt
about the attacks on the World Trade Center were considered naïve
and foolish by friends and colleagues. I was vilified. I held my
head in my hands many a day and wondered when the lunacy and
fear mongering would end. I often despaired that the WTC attacks
would lead to war that would never end.

Today, I feel a new wave in society. We are beginning to see
the mess we are in. There is a willingness to embrace some new
ideas in the air. The ideas in this book will first start with
empowering individual Americans in their own lives, and most
importantly, in their political lives. Moneyed power is not going to
give up its money or its power voluntarily, and currently, our laws
and legislation are very protective of that power and money.

Empowering individuals can lead to dangerous mob rule
without a clear unifying vision of what the society of individuals is
hoping to achieve, so this book attempts to survey the
undiscovered country of common interests. Staking out today's
unknown middle ground will require some compromises by all
sides. A new day dawns in the American body politic where
tolerance and an eye toward practical solutions for our children's
futures will rule the day.

Either we have the courage to be free, or we will not be free.
It is so very simple. On 09/11/2001, we proved to the whole world
that Americans did have the courage to be free, and then, each day
afterward, we seemed to run from that courageous truth that caused
the whole world to rally to our side. The moneyed and powerful
were terrified by what happened on 9/11, because it stripped away
all the theater of the military-industrial complex and showed that
only freedom and individual liberty could effectively combat our
enemies.

The ideas of freedom and individual liberty have never been more
under assault than they are today. The Founding Fathers laid the
groundwork for a society so forward thinking and revolutionary
that moneyed power had a hard time accepting it, even back then.
Within a few generations, the Founding Fathers' ideas and
framework were under assault by those elected into power after
George Washington. These elected positions of power, in concert
with wealthy private citizens and corporate entities, have ever
since constantly sought to curtail these rights. Lack of technology
severely crippled their efforts to rein in freedom. Until the late
twentieth century, the vastness of the country limited meaningful
surveillance. Once technology began to offer real intelligence at a
national and global scale, there was still substantial resistance to
domestic spying by our own government, especially from
conservative Republicans.

That changed on September 11, 2001. Now that the fear and
suspicion of terrorism has transformed America, those
technological abilities are being turned to the curtailment of
individual freedom and liberty in the name of safety. Despite Ben
Franklin's grim statement of reality, 'Those who would give up
essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety', we have done just that. Today
Americans are afraid and believe that the sacrifice of some liberty
and freedom will make them safer. They are very wrong.
The curtailment of individual liberty and freedom can only
make us less safe. This seems counter-intuitive, but it is true. The
events of September 11, 2001, clearly illustrate this truth. The cold,
harsh reality of that truth is scary and makes us want to hand it off
to big government. Unfortunately, big government cannot handle
the responsibility-not in its current incarnation, and certainly not
without instituting laws and procedures that would seem
totalitarian even to our post-9/11 eyes. On September 11, 2001, the
government's inherent inability to protect us from this type of
attack was clearly demonstrated.

Big government not only failed to uncover the plot, it failed
to stop the first plane from hitting its target, and in fact, it failed to
stop three out of the four airplanes hijacked on September 11,
2001. The brave people on board stopped Flight 93. They were
free people, acting on information available in a free society; they
were the ones to stop the only plane that did not hit its target.
This is not meant to condemn the government and the
military for failing to stop the other three planes. It is the nature of
the bloated bureaucratic beast that is government to react slowly.
Government is too big and pondering to react to the increasingly
fluid and flexible attacks of 21st century terrorist organizations.
Only, we as a people can compete with those organizations. In the
years since 09/11/2001, we have given away more and more of our
ability to defend ourselves against terrorists. Every time we cede
an individual right or liberty, we make ourselves less safe, not
more.

Today, the people on board Flight 93 would not be able to
stop the terrorists. Today, all communications are subject to
snooping due to the Patriot Act. Some DHS flunky would now cut
off the cell phone calls that allowed those people on board Flight
93 to come to an enlightened decision as to what action to take.
Perhaps, the passengers on Flight 93 fashioned weapons from
pocketknives and nail clippers, which would now be denied them.
Even after the 9/11 disasters prompted greater security at
airports, passengers stopped the next terrorist attempt aboard an
airline. The shoe bomber of 2003, Richard Reid, made it through
security and was going to do his dirty deed on board, but he was
noticed and restrained by passengers. Passengers stopped the
Northwest Airlines bomber of Christmas 2009 as well. These
passengers, who ignored seat belt signs and other restraints on their
freedom within the cabin, stopped another potential act of airplane
terror over eight years after the WTC attacks. Big government
failed again, and the answer government provides is always to
further restrain passengers and eliminate individual rights.

We are spending a lot of money and setting many bad
precedents with these "no constitutional rights" zones being
created in our nation's airports. The fear of giving up one's
rights makes many want to stay away from airports, but the
pressures of business force a different action. Air travel is
essential in today's world, so many reluctantly comply. Without
clear alternatives, the reluctant comply fatalistically. This
fatalism is not justified.

There is an alternative course of action that does a better job
of protecting us from terrorists, while still protecting individual
freedom and liberty. It is individual freedom and liberty that make
us stronger and harder to attack. Conversely, we are actually
weaker and easier to attack when we are not protected by the
flexibility of freedom. We should roll back much of the body
scanning and random searching of individuals, driven by shadowy,
computerized databases. A secret no-fly list is simply not very
effective when it contains the names of so many innocents.
America is free, and its people must have freedom of movement
without being required to show their papers. This is what it means
to live in a free society.

If America's solution to the terrorist threat is to end the free
society we live in, then the terrorists have won! One of the positive
effects of America's old style freedoms was the incredible ease
that our citizens could move about. A salesperson could hop on a
plane at a moment's notice and save that important account, for
example. There is an ignored, and difficult to quantify, but very
real, economic cost to these burdens that the new security regimen
has brought. This drag on our economy has been completely
ignored for the last decade.

Reducing this security burden should free up many millions
of dollars to be spent more effectively. Specifically, we should
have more air marshals. We should harden all the cockpit doors
and allow pilots to carry side arms. If we had done nothing more
than the aforementioned, we would have prevented repetitions of
the World Trade Center bombings. There is no need to repeal the
Bill of Rights within airline terminals. The fact is the terrorists are
not likely to strike the same place, the same way, so where do we
repeal the Bill of Rights next? Everything in our large, mobile
society is a potential weapon to be used against us, and we seem on
course to eventually expand the 'No Bill of Rights' zones to every
corner of the nation.

The passengers on Flight 93 showed us the way. They
demonstrated the power of the people. The greatness in America
lies in her people and the diversity of those people. Due to the
history of individual freedom and liberty, one hundred people
plucked from the streets and put into an airplane will contain a
wide range of people and skills. This is our strength. Among
those passengers, may be current and former military personnel,
police and firefighters, nurses and doctors, and even some
gangbangers, bikers, and an assortment of bad asses,
malcontents, and ne'er do wells, but they are all Americans...as
messy as that is to live in. If we had done nothing to reform
airport security after 9/11, there would have been no recurrence
of 9/11, because the passengers on Flight 93 demonstrated the
true mettle of Americans.

The phrase, "Let's Roll!" should be immortalized in the
American pantheon. Those passengers personified America in their
final acts of courage. These civilians, these common Americans,
were thrown together by random chance, but they did this nation
proud when they stopped that plane. They truly saved lives by
sacrificing their own. They made terrorists realize that Americans
were not the sheep that we are often portrayed as.

It is the consideration of what happened on Flight 93 that we
find the most confidence that our Founding Fathers' elevation of
the rights of the individual above all else, truly is the correct
course. Not only is this the correct course, but a more defensible
course than ever before. It is what makes America such a
complicated, trailblazing experiment in human culture. We need to
take back our country from the fear-mongers and take charge of
our own safety and security again.

This book's overriding theme is about America's citizens
standing up and setting the agenda for the politicians. Years after
September 11, 2001, the course we took as a nation was obviously
wrong. We allowed the politicians, liberal and conservative, to tell
us what was best for us, rather than recognizing that the passengers
of Flight 93 had shown us the way. The people of this nation must
step up and take control of the ship of state by exercising their
rights as free American citizens.

Let the politicians work out the details, but the leadership
must come from us. Freedom is not free. We must think and
understand the issues. We must question authorities that seek to
retain power for themselves. Of course, America's citizens cannot
take the power back if we are too afraid. Politicians will always
feed our fears to preserve their power and take the path of least
resistance to stay in office. Unless we stand up and take
responsibility for our nation and her policies, the government of
the people, by the people, and for the people shall perish from this
Earth.

Star Trek, the original series that only ran for three seasons has had
an undisputed influence on the growth and direction of technology
in America and in the world. There have been books and TV
episodes dedicated to track the etymology of gadget after gadget to
a particular Roddenberry-inspired device. This technological
legacy has been documented elsewhere in detail, but many of the
social messages and legacies have been lost and forgotten. Gene
Roddenberry is one of the visionary thinkers of our time and I am
heavily influenced by his vision, as our society is as a whole.

My passion for the TV show, 'Star Trek - Original' runs
deep. Maybe it was because I was born in 1962, so I was just at the
right age, I do not know. That being said, I cannot deny that my
ideas on foreign policy are influenced by the imagined future
evolution of nationalism on the planet Earth. After all, for me, the
Federation was where 1960s America was leading the globe and
then the universe. In the Federation of that far future century, war
had largely been done away with, though there was always the
occasional skirmish to be worked out. Peace reigned on Earth.

At the time the series was canceled, few would have guessed
how broadly and deeply the series has now penetrated our society.
It is one of the legacies of a time when we had a single vision
being pumped into our living rooms by the television. Much of
'Star Trek' tech has found its way into our technological world,
and engineers citing the show's influence on their ideas of what
was possible often celebrate this. However, there was more there in
that television series that should have made it into the 'idea
commons' of the American zeitgeist. I see the broader and greater
legacy of the series as largely unfulfilled and ignored in the post-
9/11 era.

There was a Russian on the bridge of the Enterprise during
the height of the Cold War. Would there be a Muslim there today,
or are we just too full of negative emotions to include a follower of
Islam today on the bridge? Socially, the series was just as far
advanced as it was technically. Martin Luther King actually
implored Nichele Nichols to stay on the show when she told him
that she was planning to abandon the Uhuru role. Martin Luther
King convinced her of the social import of her role. He recognized
the powerful social statements being made by Star Trek. Much of
that social legacy is what is unfulfilled today and yet that was
mostly what was so great about the series. The whiz-bang stuff was
fantastic, but by setting things far in the future, Roddenberry could
tackle difficult social issues from an objective distance and he did
so with a phaser-like focus.

Kirk's long speeches about humanity's longing to be free
rather than safe ring hollow in today's world of strip searches at the
airport and CIA rendition. The Dignity of the Common Man, the
real desire to let guilty men go free, rather than imprison one
innocent man, were real ideals, real beliefs. They were time-
honored, time-tested beliefs that taught us that despite the flaws,
freedom and individual liberty were the best way to go even in the
23rd century.

There was a distinct libertarian vein in the plot lines. Those
libertarian ideals have been almost completely lost in the real
world. Can you imagine what Dr. McCoy would have said were
Spock to advise the captain to torture a captive to obtain
information?! In episode after episode, these basic ideas about
humanity and the dignity of the individual are there, loudly
proclaimed.

The all-powerful Federation was always forced to respect the
dignity, not only of the common man, but also of the common
sentient life form, no matter what their technological advancement.
Could the "Prime Directive" stand up to today's torturous logic? Or
would it be considered "quaint" like the Geneva Convention? We
need only cue a William Shatner soliloquy to hear this vision of
freedom and individual dignity eloquently and passionately
espoused.

The real legacy of Star Trek is in danger of being lost. The
Dignity of the Common Man was the most central theme and how
that dignity had withstood hundreds of years of technological
advancement. Through it all the essential rightness of it as a
guiding principle never dimmed, or so predicted Gene
Roddenberry of our future.

True fans of this series, who believed in it so fervently,
should consider the deeper social message of the series and how it
relates to today to help change the course of our nation. Americans
need help understanding why they should stand up to the
surveillance society. The fear-mongers will say we have to let the
government turn this technology onto us, 'to keep us safe'.
Progressives should promote the dignity of the individual in the
way Gene Roddenberry did when we were young, but now is not
here to do today.

Truly, this vision of freedom is the great legacy of Star Trek
that should stand the test of time. Eventually, all the technological
predictions will be far surpassed, and the interplay of the
characters is all that is left. What Roddenberry was saying about
the world, about the universe, was that no matter how the
landscape changes, post 9/11 or not, there are certain guiding
principles of humanity that will help get us through and that will
set us apart in the greater universe.

Progressives will need to embrace the ideal that there are strong
synergies created by individual freedom. An embrace it must be,
because there is no question that individual freedom is a scary
thing. People will have more freedom to be stupid as individual
liberty increases under this progressive course. There is the actual
likelihood that society will be less safe in some ways, though more
safe in other more important ones. Freedom is not having to allow
your wife or daughter strip-searched at the airport. Nonetheless,
there is something very scary about allowing individuals to be free,
because one's fellow citizens will have the freedom to make bad
choices.

Life is full of risk, and our nation's return to greatness will
travel a risky road, there is no doubt. We will be trusting in our
fellow citizens to use their new freedoms wisely or at least not
destructively. Trust is a difficult word for Americans these days,
but trust our fellow Americans, we must. Sometimes, even I doubt
my fellow Americans' sanity and responsibility, given the current
state of affairs.

Despite my doubts about American sanity and responsibility,
as a bicycle commuter, I put my life in the hands of my fellow
Americans several times a week. Essentially, I trust that
Republicans and Democrats et al will at least drive responsibly. I
put faith in the system of licensing that trains and then tests drivers
before allowing them to drive. This is a system of licensing that is
run by government. The government is licensing citizens to
command a deadly weapon on the road after some training and
testing. There is a distinctive libertarian nature to bicycle
commuting as I trust my fellow citizens to be responsible drivers
with limited oversight by authorities.

Over the years, I have often commuted to my jobs on a
bicycle. I found that I did not have the disposition for the gym and
would rarely go. However, one must get to work and that generally
involves a commute. Most of the time, I have found ways to
commute on a bicycle at least some days, and it has paid off in
health benefits for me over the years.

That is not to say that there are no risks to bicycle
commuting. I have to ride in traffic and share the road with multi-
ton vehicles that are operated by strangers of varying degrees of
driving skill. After having commuted tens of thousands of miles, I
have to thank the driving skills of many anonymous American
drivers over the years to be able to write this. I have had to trust
my fellow Americans with my life, and they have come through
for me. That experience makes it easier for me to embrace the idea
of freeing my fellow Americans so that they might lead this
country back to greatness.

Not only has my bicycle commuting allowed me to trust my
fellow Americans more, I have also realized what a powerful and
efficient machine the bicycle is. I have saved many gallons of
gasoline and doctor bills through the benefits of this wonderful
machine, but it goes beyond these basic positives. The invention
and widespread adoption of the bicycle in the late 19th century
changed the world, but America especially. The bicycle is an
incredibly efficient device when it comes to converting human
effort into distance. The bicycle became a great equalizer for the
poor, but hard-working soul in America. Previously, transportation
independence required a horse and a horse required a lot of food,
housing and other maintenance that was relatively costly. The
bicycle brought to the common man a means of transportation that
could simply be parked overnight without food or water being
required.

The bicycle was a game changer as we entered the 20th
century, becoming a platform for many early internal combustion
engines. The rise of the automobile diminished the bicycle's
importance in the West, but in much of the developing world, it
continued to be the go to vehicle. A case could be made that
China's current economic power had its germination in the
efficient use of the bicycle by the populace for much of the 20th
century.

During WWII, the Dutch utilized the bicycle to continue to
resist the Germans. The Germans had stripped the country of
mechanized vehicles. Those vehicles not confiscated were useless
because all the fuel was under German control as well. The Dutch
were left with their bicycles. The Dutch leveraged these human
powered vehicles to create chaos and sabotage all across Holland.
The two-wheeled partisans of the Netherlands were a pain in
Hitler's @$$ the entire war.

Now in the 21st century, the bicycle provides an opportunity
in our society where we can experiment with rolling back our legal
Nanny-state. Right now, for all practical purposes in America,
bicycles do not really have to follow traffic laws. Of course, on the
books, they are supposed to follow the traffic laws, but in practical
terms, the police mostly ignore the bicyclist. Police understand the
dangerous and vulnerable position the cyclist is in. Unless a cyclist
engages in extremely dangerous behavior, police allow bicyclists a
certain amount of latitude as it relates to traffic law. Many cities
ban cyclists on sidewalks, but on certain busy streets, riding on the
sidewalk is the only sane thing to do. The police often blithely
allow it as common sense policing by not enforcing a stupid and
dangerous law.

In the bicycle, we have a machine that can help us conserve
fuel and cut down on gridlock and pollution. Large-scale adoption
of commuting by bicycle would bring untold benefits, many of
them intangible and difficult to predict, but benefits will be
delivered for sure. Instead of having the police give bicyclists an
'unofficial' pass on traffic laws, we could institutionalize the
freedom of the bicycle. Simply exempt bicyclists from all traffic
laws nationally except where the cyclists endanger others.
By exempting cyclists from traffic law, we can take a step in
this grand experiment to inject greater freedom into our society.
Police would still be allowed to ticket or even arrest cycling
citizens for truly reckless behavior. On the other hand, police will
allow cyclists to choose whether they will come to a full stop at
that stop sign or ride on the sidewalk. Put cyclists on their honor to
not make mischief for the rest of society and allow them
unprecedented freedom.

There are very positive social effects to be achieved by this
cycling freedom experiment. This national policy will encourage a
hardy breed of Americans that wish to be freer to adopt the bicycle
as their main mode of transportation. Freedom of requirements to
carry papers, like drivers licenses, or the freedom to ignore that
stop sign, because you are a human powered vehicle should be
powerful motivators for the true American. Non-riders who object
will just have to accept that a good look both ways at a slow clip
on a bike conserves enormous energy for the rider and allows them
sufficient time to assess whether it is safe or not. Over long
distances, this energy conservation is essential to actually
completing one's commute sometimes.

Doubters of the great libertarian-socialist experiment that this
book promotes can start their research on the wheels of a bicycle.
It is so appropriate that this be the vehicle to demonstrate the
validity of the ideas of freedom AND social interconnection. The
bicycle is one of the most efficient machines ever invented to
convert work into distance. The bicycle is an invention of
peacetime that became the basis of a mechanical world, first for the
individual unable to afford a horse and then as a platform for small
engines ushering in the great petroleum-based modern world.

Many people currently in power see the average American as
a lazy slug that will never change their ways and deserves
abridgement of their rights due to their weak will. The bicycle
holds the key to change some of the current calculus in America's
balance of trade AND demonstrate the power of free individuals. If
even a small percentage of Americans switched to bicycle
commuting, the amount of energy and money saved would be
enormous. If large numbers of Americans biked a couple thousand
miles a year on their commutes, healthcare costs would likely fall
and the energy savings could make America completely energy
independent, especially if it is in conjunction with a strong nuclear
power program.

Progressives on bicycles can truly alter the entire playing
field. Progressives can be the true game changers. Two-wheeled
progressives completely change the economic calculus that
currently seems to doom America. Two-wheeled progressives in
sufficient numbers can deliver a future that is unimagined by
anyone right now. Citizens and politicians could wake up in ten
years and see the country in the black again. The power of the
people would be clearly and unequivocally demonstrated by such
an economic and social miracle. Politicians would have to
acknowledge the power of the people. The people would gain the
confidence that freedom and individual liberty really is the right
answer just as Ben Franklin had said at the very beginning!

All that has come before in this book is interconnected and
the bicycle is no exception. We must deliver the economic miracle
to ourselves, not to the moneyed and the powerful. We cannot
deliver the miracle, if we are divided. The people will have to stop
fighting over the scraps and work together to take back the
economy and the country. These pages are meant to convince
Americans that there are solutions to the seemingly insoluble
issues before us and therefore a reason to come together.

Of course, the pages that came before certainly advocated
spending some money. This is not an austerity program. The
bicycle can seriously help fund the progressive agenda that has
been outlined here, but not all of it. This agenda really is not pie in
the sky. It is a plan to progressively restore American greatness
based on common sense and hard work. What could be more
patriotic than that?

The visions of America you read in this book are from a man who considered changing his citizenship from the United States.
I was disgusted by the endless news cycles of sex and drug scandals during the last decade of the 20th century; the cannibalization of our leadership
seemed stupid and self-destructive. All the while, individual rights were being consistently eroded under the thin guise of public safety.
During this time of personal political despair, I considered becoming a Canadian citizen. I explored the details of making such a citizenship change and
reasoned it was feasible and doable to shed my American citizenship. However, in the end, I could not do it. I could not have my, as yet unborn,
children not be Americans. I could not let go of being an American myself. America is an ideal that I could not abandon for my children or myself.

Upon deep reflection, I still saw all the negative elements that made me want to flee and no longer be an American, but something inside prevented
me from leaving this country. When I found that American deep inside, I realized I believed in the ideals too much. Things that I questioned about
the Constitution and the Bill of Rights when I first learned about them in school, because they seemed a danger to public safety, I now understood.
As a student, when I first started hearing about and considering the Bill of Rights, much of it seemed a bit impractical and even naive. By wrestling
with the choice of citizenship, I found the Bill of Rights and embraced it passionately. The ideals of individual liberty and freedom, enshrined in
that document, introduced the concept of a free citizen to a world of divine monarchies. I looked in the mirror, and I was an American. I believed in
what the Founding Fathers preached, and I could not abandon it. My kids would be Americans with the red, the white, and the blue coursing through their
veins, just like me. And this book and this vision were created as a gift to my children; all American children for that matter.

Anthony Watson is a native born Californian. He currently resides behind the Orange Curtain with his wife and two sons.

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XContact Author
anthony [at] theprogressiverestoration.com

Incidentally, while writing this book, I came up with my own
little banner (see above) to fly on my bicycle while commuting.
You can get a 2-Wheeled Progressive battle flag for your bicycle.